Premier Stephen McNeil has asked the province’s utilities regulator to assess Nova Scotia Power Corp.’s performance after the weekend’s intense storm left much of the province without power.

“We’ve asked that they expedite it ... and the (Nova Scotia Utility and Review) board has agreed to do so,” McNeil said in a telephone interview following a press conference in Middleton on Friday morning.

The Annapolis Valley and much of the western portion of the province was hit hard Saturday by post-tropical storm Arthur, with high winds reaching140 kilometres an hour.

As of 2 p.m. Friday, 1,470 Nova Scotians were still without power. NSP vowed to have everyone back online before Saturday.

In McNeil’s case, his family had electricity restored at their Upper Granville home Thursday.

“Part of the frustration that many Nova Scotians have identified was just the communication aspect,” he said. “It seemed like the only response was, ‘Your power will be on in 24 hours,’ and they just kept moving that 24-hour marker down the road.

“If people had known (it) was going to be longer, then they could have made arrangements,” the premier said.

The public will be able to participate in the review process to express their frustrations and make recommendations,.

Details of the review are still being worked out. The URB will finalize how it will conduct the process next week. The premier also expects the board to make short-term and long-term recommendations.

The review will include the utility’s storm preparedness, staffing levels, vegetation management, in-bound and out-bound communications, the state of transmission and distribution equipment and NSP’s response to the storm, McNeil said.

It will also address compensation for losses due to outages, he said.

NDP MLA Sterling Belliveau said he’s pleased McNeil is now considering making NSP accountable for food spoilage due to extended outages.

On Wednesday, the premier accused the New Democrats of cheap politics when the party suggested that all parties work to create a food-replacement program which would be funded by the utility.

“I would still like to see the government step in and provide assistance to those who lost food following Arthur. For many, making an insurance claim just isn’t an option,” Belliveau said in a release Friday.

Tory MLA and energy critic Chris d’Entremont filed a complaint with the URB Thursday. On Friday, d’Entremont said he is happy the URB is going to act.

“We felt it was important that someone provide customers with actual answers as to what went wrong here,” d’Entremont said in a release, which also accused McNeil of being weak in his response to Nova Scotia Power’s handling of the outage.

For its part, the power company says it welcomes the review board’s scrutiny of its work to restore power and to deal with customers.

“With a major storm like Arthur, a review process with the Utility and Review Board is appropriate, given the impact of the storm and the number of Nova Scotians who were affected,” NSP president and CEO Bob Hanf said in a news release Friday afternoon.

Hanf said the utility will start putting together data for the review next week. For now, they are busy trying to get the lights back on across the province.

The province will also be looking at its own role in the post-Arthur response by reviewing the Emergency Measures Office’s activities, McNeil said.

The premier also said he would like to make sure that vulnerable citizens are looked after in crisis situations and that comfort centres have adequate resources.

In McNeil’s case, he said his own family didn’t suffer any losses as a result of the outage, but they were scrambling to find a generator for a brother who lives nearby and requires oxygen.

He said neighbours all pitched in sharing generators and checking on one another.

“It’s one of the great things about living in a small community.”

McNeil also praised the province’s volunteer firefighters who operated comfort stations, cut trees and in some cases, even cooked meals for people who were struggling without power.

“We owe them a great debt of gratitude,” he said.

The URB review of NSP’s response to Arthur will end up being part of the Liberal’s ongoing electricity review. The government has proposed legislation which would see penalties imposed when Nova Scotia Power fails to meet basic service standards.

In his statement, Hanf defended the utility saying it has spent more than $70 million over the past four years on “storm hardening the electricity system”.

The damage caused by Arthur was only surpassed by that of hurricane Juan back in 2003, Hanf said.

The review is also good news for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1928 which represents the utility’s linemen.

Before Arthur hit, the IBEW was predicting long waits for restoration. In the 1990s NSP employed about 350 linemen and that number has since dropped to 167, said union business manager Jeff Richardson.

Outsourcing will continue to cause a degradation of service levels and power system reliability, the union release said.

Since Saturday, NSP has had 700 people working to restore power and once that is completed, the utility will send crews to help New Brunswick, Hanf said in his release.

Many of the contractors brought in by Nova Scotia Power were from New Brunswick, Richardson said in a telephone interview Friday morning. That decision was made when Arthur was expected to hit Nova Scotia the hardest and New Brunswick not so much.